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32 Creative and Interesting Bento Boxes

For most Japanese mothers, lunch is not just simple food preparation and packing meals for their love ones, they spend their time arranging the meal in aesthetically pleasing way. These lunch boxes are known as “Bento.” Bento is a Japanese word for a meal served in a box. In history, bento is a packed Japanese lunch box, same idea to, the Korean dosirak, Filipino baon, or the Indian tiffin lunch. Today, they are a vibrant art form admired around the world.

If you’re interested on creating one for yourself or for your love ones, there are plenty of garnishes and interesting side dishes for your bento. A basic Bento is only divided into 2 parts: half of the lunch box is filled with rice, the other half is filled with a range of complementary foods, such as eggs, vegetables, meat or fish. Below you’ll see some of well-designed Bento that goes beyond the basic Bento preparation.

Lovely Bento. Yaoi is one of Ramachan’s favorite manga. Yaoi is a Japanese word, which is in fact itís an acronym. It comes from “Yama nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi”, which means “no climax, no point, no meaning”. (via: Ramachan)

Meta Knight bento. This Meta Knight bento was made of a rice ball with plastic wrap, and Anna put some seasoned seaweed inside. Meta Knight is dark blue with a gray mask, so I put ground black sesame seeds around the bottom half on the side of rice ball for the blue part. (via: AnnaTheRed)

Spring Picnic Bento. This is an entry bento design by Laura for the Spring Contest sponsored by Bento & Co. (via: Laura Bento)

Wallace and Gromit Bento. Wallace and Gromit is one of the creator’s favorite British animated films. Susan use rice stuffed with barbeque chicken to create Wallace and kamaboko for his eyes and teeth. (via: Susan Yuen)